Howard Zinn was a historian, an author, a
playwright; an anti-war activist and a champion of civil rights; but above all,
Howard Zinn was a teacher.

He chaired the Department of History and
Social Sciences atSpelman, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1956 to 1963. He also served as an adviser to the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Spelman--until he was fired for "encouraging Spelman's young women to picket and engage in other "unladylike'
activities." He then became a Professor of Political Science at Boston
University, where he repeatedly clashed with University officials over his
public opposition to the Viet Nam War (Forbes.com,
2/1/10). Zinn retired from BostonUniversity
in 1988, "spending his last day of class
on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses' strike."--AP,
1/29/10

******

Wherever Howard Zinn taught, his lessons went far beyond the names and
dates, facts and figures that pass for history in too many classes. He wanted
something more for his students:

"I wanted
students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to
relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against
injustice wherever they saw it."--You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Beacon Press, 1994

"My hope
is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way our society
measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust;
that you will act out the courage that I know is in you.", 2005 Commencement address at
Spelman College (where Zinn had been fired in 1963)

******

Howard Zinn didn't just teach history; he taught patriotism--not the
flag-waving, Chicken-Hawk kind of patriotism that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News
sells-- but a higher form of patriotism.

"The
highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of
one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain."--George McGovern, Democratic anti-war
candidate for President, 1/18/71

"The
peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure
only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country--when right
to be kept right; when wrong to be put right'."--Carl
Schurz (1829-1906), American statesman and Union Army General in the
American Civil War

Zinn's anti-war sentiments began after his participation in WWII bombing
missions in Germany,
Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and France
(where one of the first uses of military uses of napalm took place). That
experience, along with Zinn's post-war academic research on Allied bombing
missions, made him realize that we were not just killing "enemies" in the war;
we were also knowingly and deliberately killing innocent civilians; and that
was unacceptable to Zinn--no matter who was doing it or how they tried to
justify it. (The following quotes are from Zinn's A Just Cause, Not a Just War in The Progressive, December 2001)

"World
War II analogies are conveniently summoned forth when there is a need to
justify a war, however irrelevant to a particular situation. At the suggestion
that we withdraw from Vietnam, or not make war on Iraq, the word "appeasement" was bandied
about. The glow of the "good war' has repeatedly been used to obscure the
nature of all the bad wars we have fought since 1945."

Howard Zinn was not a pacifist. He did not believe in appeasement oraggression, and he knew the difference between the two:

Mick Youther is an American citizen, an independent voter, a veteran, a parent, a Christian, a scientist, a writer, and all-around nice guy who has been aroused from a comfortable apathy by the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration.